Tuesday 26 August 2008 12.59 EDT
First published on Tuesday 26 August 2008 12.59 EDT

Hometown: London.

The lineup: Jim Eliot (synths) and Mima Stilwell (vocals).

The background: Now that Goldfrapp have gone all floaty and pastoral on the nation's ass, there's a gap in the market for a boy-girl duo making sultry, sassy electro-pop with 80s rock flourishes. You'll already have heard of Kish Mauve because it was with their song 2 Hearts that Kylie Minogue staged her comeback and reached No 1 last year. And now they're hoping to have a hit themselves with another track that Kylie wanted for her album, X. You can see why. Lose Control is a far better song than 2 Hearts and would have made the perfect follow-up single, with its late 70s disco groove and insidiously rhythmic guitar line running throughout that recalls Chic or their rivals Change circa The Glow of Love and a superb Ernie Isley-ish solo at the end. It's got that great compressed sound you used to hear on all those French "filter house" records a few years back – the song's remixer Fred Falke is the musical other half of French disco supremo Alan Braxe. Not that Kylie feels too short-changed – short, yes – or hard-done-by because she's written a song herself for Kish Mauve's forthcoming debut album, Black Heart, called You Make Me Feel. Jim Eliot and Mima Stilwell, the duo behind Kish Mauve, call it a "pop swap". They should turn it into a TV show with Noel Edmonds as presenter.

Having one of your first songs covered by the Munchkin queen of Oz disco is the sort of stroke of good fortune most groups can only dream of. But Kish Mauve are all about the lucky break: they've had several of their tunes on the soundtrack to US TV series Dirty Sexy Money, Kate Moss has pouted along to their music on a Rimmel ad, last year every Sony Ericsson phone was pre-loaded with a previous single of theirs, Can't Get Enough, and the Dell computer firm used Kish Mauve's version of 2 Hearts.

They want to stress the seriousness of the venture, though – it's not just about exposure, it's about Art. Stilwell describes herself as "a Joni Mitchell junkie" who's also into Carole King, Suzanne Vega, Stevie Nicks – "you know, emotional, kooky girl singers". Eliot, who has been working with rock-disco likeminds Ladyhawke, is into krautrock and noise-pop and would like to imagine their music has a darkness about it, a melancholy quality, that elevates it above the level of fist-pumping techno pabulum. They've got Dave (Depeche Mode) Bascombe in to mix their album, and that makes sense: a lot of their stuff sounds like Violator-era Mode with a female singer cooing with cool dispassion over the top. Talking of which, they've just done a fab version of lost synth-pop classic I'm In Love With a German Film Star by a boy-girl duo called the Passions who reached No 25 in January 1981 and then mysteriously disappeared without trace. Could it be…? Nah.

The buzz: "More seductive than Angelina Jolie with a six-pack on ice and more infectious than Chlamydia."

The truth: They're not quite as interesting as they think – they certainly don't sound like Joni Mitchell meets Neu! – but the Falke mix of Lose Control could be an Indian Summer hit like Groovejet, which it strongly resembles, was back in 2000.

Most likely to: Gain control – the publishing alone from the Kylie cover must have netted them a small fortune.

Least likely to: Lose control – Eliot and Stilwell, real-life partners, have just had a baby so no more disco abandon for them.

What to buy: Lose Control is released by YNYS on September 1, followed by debut album Black Heart.